85 comments for “You Know What’s Fun?”

Are these supposed to be law students? Glory be, that’s sad. Don’t let it get you down, Jill, since you are super gorgeous and shit.

I’ll tell you what, the first few months I was at Pandagon, I was absolutely crushed by all the wingnuts spreading rumors that I was ugly and I had this strong, petulant desire to start posting my picture to demonstrate otherwise, which some friends and my co-blogger gently discouraged. They were right–after the furor died down, I put my image out there and while it shut up a lot of the whiners, the hard core morons are still out there insisting I’m big as a house and balding.

Moral of the story? Men who obsess over this shit are huge losers who are accessing their male privilege to cast judgement and they don’t care if their judgements are even accurate because all they want is to hurt women.

200 lb fat pig, indeed. Is there such a thing as a reverse body dismorphic disorder? Where everyone else looks ugly, and you think you’re hot shit? Or could you just call that narcissism?

ilyka

January 2, 2006 at 11:52 pm

Amanda said it, but if you need further emphasis, these freaks so don’t even matter, in any context. I mean, you wouldn’t want to date them, right? So to hell with ’em on that score. In fact you wouldn’t want to know them at all, I’m betting.

Too often when men pass judgment (and Amanda’s right; they don’t care whether that judgment is accurate) on a woman’s appearance, her first reaction is, “But–but–I am too pretty! I am not either ugly!”

Listen, fuck that. You know what the first reaction should be? It should be, “How do these guys measure up TO ME?” Because what about your standards? Don’t those matter? And if they do, and these idiots could not possibly meet them, then who cares what they think? This is like worrying because John Derbyshire likes ’em underage. Hello? It’s JOHN DERBYSHIRE.

To be perfectly blunt, if it were me, I’d yank this post back into the ether and forget it ever happened. But I’m a believer in not giving folks the satisfaction.

cory

January 3, 2006 at 12:17 am

The people on xoxohth.com can’t be law students. Doodness and his little wank-buddys sound like Beavis and Butthead. If they are more than 15, we are truly doomed to go down into darkness.

That’s just bizzare. People aren’t just speculating that you must be fat/ugly/bitter/all of the above. They are looking at pictures of you and thensaying you’re ugly and fat. WTF? Are they following the same links I am? I mean, maybe you’re just my type or something, but I’d think even someone more conditioned to simpering blondes would at least admit that you’re reasonably attractive. 0_o

Allah

January 3, 2006 at 12:34 am

Please. Every conversation I’ve ever had with right-wing guys about Feministe comes down to two points: 1) Lauren and Jill are nuts; 2) Lauren and Jill are gorgeous.

Well, I’m just an old, happily married fart, but IMHO, intelligence and a sense of humor are very attractive (two of the many reasons I married the woman I did). I have no idea who these cretins are, but I suspect their personal lives are as pathetic as their opinions.

Also, Lauren, IMHO, simpering is most assuredly NOT hot! The same goes for whining.

You two young ladies rock, and the fact that you’re both beautiful is simply a nice bonus for us males.

You have absolutely nothing to worry about in the looks department. They’re only doing this because they think they might smell blood.

Jill, I’m a pretty normal looking guy–don’t frighten small children or anything–but I made the mistake of mentioning on another forum that I have a craniofacial condition called Crouzon Syndrome. Bang. Suddenly jokers like this start spotting symptoms in all of my online photos, and recommending suicide (or at least a nice head-sized bag to cover me up). Yet somehow they never noticed how mindblowingly hideous I was supposed to be until I happened to mention Crouzon Syndrome. It’s not your looks that they’re going after. It’s the fact that you’re asserting yourself. Girls aren’t supposed to, y’see.

Huge fan of your blog. I know from experience that there’s not really anything a random person on the Internet can say to make you feel pretty if anyone’s put even a germ of an idea in your head that you’re not, but FWIW…you’re pretty hot stuff, and anyone who says otherwise is just messin’ with you.

As far as the “200 pounds” thing goes, I don’t know which bothers me more. The fact that wankers like this look at celebrities who have “ballooned” up to 130 pounds (a good 30 pounds below average) and pronounce them “chubby,” or the fact that these folks think it would be appropriate to criticize a woman for her weight if she were 200 pounds.

It’s crap like this that turns random people into feminists.

KnifeGhost

January 3, 2006 at 1:47 am

Although there’s reason to believe Allah’s just trying to be sweet.

That was me cutting you some slack. It may be well intended, but, as my Feminist friends at UVic said, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

nerdlet

January 3, 2006 at 1:49 am

I’m just impressed that half of them seem to be saying OMG FEMINISTS WHO THINK THAT THERE ARE REALLY MEN WHO THINK OF WOMEN AS ONLY OBJECTS TO BE FUCKED ARE STUPID + LYING while almost all of ’em are saying OMG ANY WOMAN WHO PROTESTS THE CALENDAR IS UGLY + FAT + UNFUCKABLE and yes, that means that most of them lack not only the ability to comprehend their own statements, but the ability to even read the statements of others in the same thread. Wow. Monkeys on keyboards?

nerdlet

January 3, 2006 at 1:55 am

That was partly incomprehensible. Rephrase: Many of them are saying that women must be fat & ugly to protest to the calendar, many of ’em are saying that the idea that there’s anything wrong with objectifying women is ridiculous, & many of them are making both comments & the ones who aren’t are ignoring the supporting comments from those who do and none of them can put it all together. Simply, how is it possible to be so dumb?

Marksman2000

January 3, 2006 at 2:44 am

I wouldn’t attach my real name to a blog. I would be especially careful about letting people know WHO you are and WHERE they can find you. Fruitbars abound.

Heh. I try not to look at y’all’s pictures and go “WOW” too loudly, given the fact that what got my attention the first time I was here, keeps me coming back is y’all’s writing and analysis. I’m abrasive enough without acting like a teenager as well. :D What gets me, is how freaked out they are by a few words in a well-written, interesting, and amusing profile. The reaction would be about the same if they were little kids, and someone had made scissors motions towards their groins with two fingers, while going “snip, snip!”

Going from having hair down to the small of my back (when dry and curly) to having short hair, the way people treat me is very, very different. It’s not all good, either – I live in an unpleasant neighborhood, and the looks of suspicion I still get (it’s only been a little over a month) are pretty disturbing. The differences in reactions really rubbed it in for me how infuriating being judged on appearances is. (going from short to long hair was too slow a process to really nail me with the difference)

*toddles off to the coffeemaker to see if there’s any left, because he’s way too tired to make sense right now*

Antigone

January 3, 2006 at 3:48 am

I honestly don’t understand where this whole “she’s ugly which is why she has a problem with a nakey calendar comes from”.

In her post, several reasons were given why she felt that the calendar was sexist. Whether or not one agrees that this is sexist (in theory, I disagree, in practice I agree) none of the arguments had anything to do with physical attractiveness and wanting to be a guy (where the hell are people still picking up this Fruedian crap? For the most part, I LIKE my anatomy, I just wish it was more respected).

If an argument was made that only beautiful people should have the right to free speach (don’t laugh, I’ve heard this argument floating around the net before) then would the relative attractiveness level of the speaker be under question. Other than that, wtf cares.

Antigone

January 3, 2006 at 3:57 am

And after reading some more comments like “If this is what pro-choice looks like, I just went from undecided to pro-life”.

Basing political decisions on shallow tastes: nice. Fucktards, the other side can have them.

I’d find it easier to sympathize with “If this is what pro-choice looks like, I just went from undecided to pro-choice.” I’m still trying to get my head around how Jill’s supposed to be unattractive. That’s a laugh-out-loud funny thing to say. But then I guess not; I remember watching an interview with a supermodel a few years back. Interviewer asked if there was anything she didn’t like about herself. Yeah, she said. Her ears were so asymmetrical. Really ugly ears, she said. Made her ashamed to look in the mirror. She’d had all this plastic surgery, all this exercise, all these starvation routines, and she still said she hated the way she looks.

This is what American culture, western culture, post-industrial culture does to women. It’s just the usual redneck pig, beating a woman and saying “You’re nothing! You’re worthless! Nobody wants you!” I don’t even want to think about how many generations, how many lifetimes, how many undiscovered universes we’ve lost to these kinds of bastards. I do know, from experience, that arguing with them is a waste of time because they share no common ground from which to argue. “You’re hurting women” only works as an argument if they don’t want to hurt women.

And totally agreed, Tom Head. I cringe to think of all the lovers I’ve managed to make uncomfortable by being embarrassed of what I look like nekkid, when clearly they were enthused about the situation. So fellas, if a woman is being shy or weird in bed, blame the patriarchy for telling her she’ll never be good enough, because it’s so widely agreed that no woman will ever be good enough.

Funny. If you met them in a bar, I have no doubt they’d be they assholes trying out their best pickup lines on you.

In this blogging business, we tend to run across people who either already agree with us, or vehemently disagree. The fence sitters — the ones we’re arguably trying to reach — tend to keep quiet. But you are reaching them. I bet if you could somehow get a tally of all the people you’ve positively affected by your work on feminism, it would be staggering.

Those guys are just a bunch of petulant crybabies who think political discourse is attacking someone’s appearance instead of the ideas they disagree with. Immature, stupid and argumentively challenged – can’t imagine any of them being even marginally competent lawyers.

Starla

January 3, 2006 at 9:52 am

I like how the only way they feel they can bring you down is by attacking your physical qualities (or lack there of in their opinions) instead of debating over the political aspect of the topic at hand. Typical schoolyard mentality.

Palamedes

January 3, 2006 at 10:33 am

Screw the twelve-year-old mentalities of these boys – definitely not men, regardless of their chronological age.

If they can’t scare you, they’ll try to shame you or drown you out.

My daughter’s gone through this crap periodically since she entered Fourth Grade. Fortunately, she always ends up finding boys that aren’t freaked or intimidated by her presence or personality.

Pity they can’t actually discuss the issues at hand, but then I suspect they know they can’t either, so it devolves to a “You stink!/You’re ugly!/LA-LA-LA!!! I can’t hear you!” argument way too fast.

Sheer hyperbole; given the chance, any person on that board would jump into bed with a women several notches below Jill in the looks department. It’s not as though Jill or Lauren is teetering on the edge of attractiveness; both are, by any reasonable standard, gorgeous. That these law students (? *shudder*) use words like “hideous” instead of “Oh, she’s not my type” is proof positive that they’re merely cretins who dislike her personally or have some crippling misanthropy.

Who is “El Dooderino” anyway?

zuzu

January 3, 2006 at 12:37 pm

These guys are obviously assholes, but it bothers me that being called fat and/or hideous provokes such a strong, “But you’re not fat! You’re not ugly!” response.

I could just be feeling marginalized by the idea that being fat is the worst thing a woman could be called.

Speaking with the authority of someone who’s both rail thin and gorgeous, I second Zuzu’s concern that we’re empowering an unfair beauty standard with our protestations. Who cares what these guys think?

If overall contribution to the world (or the blogosphere at least) were measured in bodymass, Jill would be HUGE.

nerdlet

January 3, 2006 at 1:12 pm

I honestly don’t understand where this whole “she’s ugly which is why she has a problem with a nakey calendar comes from”.

Ahem. Swearing.

Because these guys truly, strongly believe that every single woman wants first and foremost to be considered fuckable by all men, especially them. If a woman is protesting something sexual like that, porn/stripping/whatever, she’s just jealous of the women who do “get to be” considered fuckable. As zuzu points out, there’s a less-strong version of that even among more enlightened people, as we can see from the posts above.

I’m not criticizing most of the people who’ve replied, because I’d also assure a friend in the same place that she really is gorgeous, etc. But I’d also point out that there are plenty of guys who’d happily fuck a hole in the ground and then brag to all his friends later about what a slut the hole is. (Okay, maybe not the latter part, but I know for certain the former is true.)

Anyone who feels the need to mock the physical appearance of others in this manner is not doing it because they have any idea what “real beauty” is, they’re doing it because they think all women exist largely or only to be fantasized about and fucked by them. That’s it.

Thomas

January 3, 2006 at 1:28 pm

Zuzu said:

These guys are obviously assholes, but it bothers me that being called fat and/or hideous provokes such a strong, “But you’re not fat! You’re not ugly!” response.

I read this post this morning, and I thought about commenting several times, but I never settled on what to say, and Zuzu’s comment crystallized the reason for my indecision.

Whenever the issue of Lauren’s or Jill’s attractiveness comes up, there are no shortage of people saying that Lauren/Jill is very attractive, in ways that range from the supportive to the creepy. That’s probably in Jill and Lauren’s best interest, because no matter how much they may “know” at a cognitive level that people generally find them attractive, lots of this stuff is processed below that level, and hearing onesself described as attractive certainly counteracts the insult. I hesitate to chime in with the same stuff — not because I disagree. Attractiveness is very subjective and, beyond “attractive/unattractive,” broad agreement is hard to find; but I do find both of our bloggers pretty damned attractive.

But like Zuzu suggested, it couldn’t be the end of the world if they were not. Is it really important to say, “no you’re not,” which works for Jill and Lauren? No. That’s nice, but it’s not important. What’s important is to say to these guys, “what are you doing, hiring a spokesmodel? You’re comeback to her analysis is that she’s ugly? You’re an idiot.”

It does, however, make sense to counteract the stereotype that feminists are not conventionally attractive, because while appeals to ulterior motives are technically as hominem, they’re really a special kind case: an argument that the speaker is self- interested does carry some weight in most people’s minds. To that end, I’ve used our bloggers’ photos to disabuse some progressive non-feminist guys of the notion that feminists are all conventionally unattractive (Lindsay Beyerstein’s photo from Majikthise serves well in this regard also).

The weight thing is closely related, but it also wraps in a huge set of issues about (1) health; and (2) culpability and assumptions about behavior. I won’t attempt to tackle all that here, but I recommend the Alas, A Blog archives and blogroll on fat-acceptance issues. I will say this, however: my wife is a BBW (big, beautiful woman). The way she has been made to feel about her own body makes me consistently angry, and I blame the patriarchy.

I think nerdlet hits the nail on the head. I’m going to quote and repeat this just because it’s such a rocking comment:

Because these guys truly, strongly believe that every single woman wants first and foremost to be considered fuckable by all men, especially them. If a woman is protesting something sexual like that, porn/stripping/whatever, she’s just jealous of the women who do “get to be” considered fuckable. As zuzu points out, there’s a less-strong version of that even among more enlightened people, as we can see from the posts above.

I’m not criticizing most of the people who’ve replied, because I’d also assure a friend in the same place that she really is gorgeous, etc. But I’d also point out that there are plenty of guys who’d happily fuck a hole in the ground and then brag to all his friends later about what a slut the hole is. (Okay, maybe not the latter part, but I know for certain the former is true.)

Anyone who feels the need to mock the physical appearance of others in this manner is not doing it because they have any idea what “real beauty” is, they’re doing it because they think all women exist largely or only to be fantasized about and fucked by them. That’s it.

And for the record, it does bother me that we live on a planet where if Jill did weigh 400 pounds, it’d matter. It’s none of these wankers’ business. Their criticisms make sense to them only because…well, only because of the thought pattern (if we must call it “thought”) that nerdlet talks about. Their operating definition:

woman (n.) 1. An aesthetic product, to be judged and quantified by men. 2. A means of sexual release.

We don’t put our pictures up to be considered fuckable, we put our pictures up so that people can put a face to our writing. I appreciate this as a reader of many blogs and I’m sure others feel the same. While that does leave us open to be judged on our appearances, I never expected to be commented upon in such a wide sphere.

Nonetheless, what creeps me out the most is that Jill is being responded to in this manner by PEOPLE SHE MAY KNOW, SEE, AND INTERACT WITH EVERYDAY. That these people find great joy in slamming her looks anonymously, put that together with the NYU threads wanting to know if anyone had had a Jill-spotting in Class X, and I’d be freaked out.

I’ve been lucky because I am not heavily involved on my campus and don’t have many campus contacts apart from my teachers and professors. Most of my friends aren’t in college with me, and those that are have zero interest in my website and/or understand and follow general habits of internet etiquette. In this environment, most people don’t give a shit about blogging which has afforded me a certain amount of anonymity. In NYC, one of the blogging capitals and a heavily digital city, Jill may have strength in her ability to disappear into the masses, but this sort of commentary would make me feel watched on several disconcerting levels, considering that said commenters have made her into an object to be commented upon.

Now, if any of these conveniently anonymous detractors wanted to bring their comments to this blog when that thread was active, they had no reason not to show their pretty little heads and address Jill (and me) in a more equal debate. That they decided not to, and decided to hit Jill with some of the most vapid commentary that I’ve ever seen, not only says much about their characters but their debate skills as well. And frankly, I don’t think much of anyone in law school who resigns their arguments to, “She’s fat.”

If anyone is still unclear on this, and yes I’m speaking to those of you who have tried to comment with more of the same, your comments on this blog (except for the NYU calendar — you had your chances, sorry) are welcome providing they are on topic and providing that you attempt to address the topic in an adult manner. See the comment policy above this string of comments if this eludes you. Bonus points offered to those who are brave enough to use real names and/or email accounts, especially if you choose to comment on Jill in alternative forums. At least give her the option of looking out for your sorry asses as she goes about her day.

Antigone

January 3, 2006 at 2:57 pm

Wow, nerdlet, I think that summation speaks more of male privelege than I’ve ever heard in my life.

That a woman’s entire exsistence is based on them (at least in their minds) is so creepily narcissistic I think I need to go vomit now.

Lauren, agreed that all this is creepy as hell. Are there any anti-stalking provisions, or other university policies, that might be playable here if this garbage continues?

nerdlet

January 3, 2006 at 3:34 pm

We don’t put our pictures up to be considered fuckable, we put our pictures up so that people can put a face to our writing

Just to clarify, I certainly don’t think you do, and I’m squicked by all the guys who believe that the act of female bloggers posting their pictures transforms their blog into hotornot.com.

On the plus side of all of this, I used to think I wasn’t smart enough for law school. Now I’m pretty sure I can have an incredibly successful career in law if these folks are my competition.

zuzu

January 3, 2006 at 3:45 pm

Hissycat gets right at what was bothering me about the reactions to the vile boys’ post:

Charming. One of Feministe’s most endearing commenters even takes it upon himself to defend Derbyshire’s comments. Whatever. That should not be surprising given the numerous other endearing comments that man has left at Feministe before.

What troubles me more than gross people making gross defenses of other gross people’s gross statements is that the other side, those who find Derbyshire’s remarks distasteful, false or revolting keep making the same argument– essentially that Derbyshire’s comments are objectionable because they are wrong; slightly older women are actually quite pretty. Women commenters testify that they receive more male attention in their thirties and say they’re much prettier now than they were at sixteen. Male commenters chivalrously step in to claim that they don’t find nymphettes appealing at all, that older women are really sexy, and that they raised no objection at all to the display of Jen Anniston’s titty.

Am I being overly harsh and unfair to people I’m largely in sympathy with? Yes, undoubtedly. But I find myself really rankled by the narrowness and sexism that both sides of the spat are participating in. On one side, they say older men are wired to get hard for ninth-graders; on the other side, they say, no, developed breasts are actually much more sexy. Big fucking deal. The disagreement is about which variety of sex-bot is most pleasing to me; everyone, on both sides, in complicit in the assumptions that 1) pleasing men is important, and 2) women are sex-bots that exist for no reason besides men’s viewing pleasue. So, yes, this kind of boils my blood.

Although I agree wholeheartedly that the truly horrifying thing is that these are people who know who Jill are and where to find her, yet she doesn’t know who they are. I used to use my real name on the internets, but I stopped when someone told me of her experience with being stalked by an ex after an exchange she had that was funny as hell made its way around the net and he found her from information he pieced together from her posts. I’ve always been sort of surprised that you do post your pictures and identifying information.

In this environment, most people don’t give a shit about blogging which has afforded me a certain amount of anonymity. In NYC, one of the blogging capitals and a heavily digital city, Jill may have strength in her ability to disappear into the masses, but this sort of commentary would make me feel watched on several disconcerting levels, considering that said commenters have made her into an object to be commented upon.

Back in the mid-to-late ‘nineties, when man lived among the dinosaurs, the World Wide Web was like a newborn fawn taking its first tentative steps, and I attented college, we had shit like this too. It was just on the college AppleTalk network, though, where people would run “gossip servers” (publically-accessable folders with publically-accessible SimpleText documents, upon which people would leave their thoughts about other members of the student body). Then, as now, people felt free to say plenty of vile shit behind the veil of anonymity.

There may be a similar thing going on here. NYU itself is huge, but the law school is a tiny population within it. I get the impression Jill’s quite visible within that smaller community because of her blogging (and the newspaper?). Add the big-fish-small-pond thing to the well-documented fact that being on either a campus or the Internet can cause Teh Crazy, and you get the deeply weird stuff to which Jill links above.

Lucky for Jill, she’ll only find herself in situations where she’ll have to deal with this sort of thing for the rest of her life.

Okay, sarcasm aside, it really seems like being the sort of anencephalic cumbubble who could write about someone’s feminist arguments making them fat, ugly, and probably also a slut and a shrew, is its own punishment. If they are law-school people, they’ll become the kind of asshole lawyer in tassled loafers that muggers target when they’re feeling community-minded. Sure, they’ll be rich and privelleged, but they’re still assholes.

zuzu

January 3, 2006 at 5:38 pm

Make no mistake, in a lot of ways New York City is really a small town.

Perhaps I’m being elitist and naive, but I always tend to assume that younger, well-educated men from places like NYU law are not going to think like the guys on this thread apparently think. (I was especially charmed by the part where the guys are saying they would never may someone they drooled over in a calendar, like being married to them would be some great privilege.) It’s incredibly disturbing to think that someone from one of these threads could wind up as an associate at my firm and I might never know the difference. What a vile look at misogynist thinking out in the open.

I’m really sorry this happened by the way.

Susanna

January 3, 2006 at 6:57 pm

Jill: my mom always told me “solo se le tiran piedras al arbol cargado de frutos.” You only throw rocks at the tree that is full of fruit. In short, you’re getting this shit because you’re pretty, smart and successful. Fuck them.

KnifeGhost

January 3, 2006 at 7:45 pm

And frankly, I don’t think much of anyone in law school who resigns their arguments to, “She’s fat.”

I tease Lauren and Jill about their politics being nuts and you conclude that I can’t tolerate a woman “with a mind of her own.”

It’s so … unlike you, Amanda.

anashi

January 3, 2006 at 8:03 pm

God, do they realize how threatening they come off? I’d seriously start carrying mace if I had these nutjobs at my college. I really wish there was a way to get men like them to understand how it feels to be violated everyday of their lives by unthinking, unfeeling males like them. That is privilege in a nutshell to have this level of apathy about how your actions and words effect other people. The internet affords these people a level of protection they wouldn’t have in the real world. If they said anything like this around me in real life you bet your ass I’d make my anger known. Fucking cowards.

nerdlet

January 3, 2006 at 8:23 pm

“I’d seriously start carrying mace if I had these nutjobs at my college.”

There’s nothing to suggest that these particular creeps are any different from people anywhere else, unless NYU is particularly noted for breeding misogynistic jerks. In short, you almost certainly do have guys like that at your school.

ilyka

January 3, 2006 at 8:26 pm

you conclude that I can’t tolerate a woman “with a mind of her own.”

Yeah, I really cannot imagine where she’d get that idea. It’s not as though you’ve ever sung the praises of being a sugar daddy to a really fabulous-looking piece of ass or anything. It’s not as though you spend your days funneling links that “prove” women are all vapid, gold-digging whores to other bloggers, either. It’s not as though you haven’t said numerous times that Chris Klein’s your personal hero, oh no.

Honestly, now: Do you really think no one’s onto your shit? Seriously, do you? Because the one thing I never thought of you was that you might actually just be stupid.

Alas, there are still some men in the world who think that the only reason a man should ever listen to a woman is so that he will know the right thing to say to get into her pants. In their minds, feminist thinking is irrellivant because:
a) feminists are gay, and wont have sex with men
b) feminists are too ugly to have sex with
c) feminists hate men, so theres no chance for sex

the message we must send these morons is, ALL women are Feminists, and nobody is going to get laid until we get the respect we deserve. Or better yet, the only men getting any are the men who are manly enough not to be threatened by intelligent powerful (sexy) women.

Au contraire, my bigoted weirdo troll non-friend. I am 100% percent accurate quite often, at least four or five times a day. My observation of you wasn’t really that special, dear sir. Just one more amazing Amanda ability to be uncannily correct.

I am ugly, and fat, and old besides. And I have braces on my teeth. Menopausal braces! Imagine! Funny thing, over all the years it hasn’t affected my love life much — I guess not, anyway; I’ve been happily occupied since just after adolescence. Remember “Everything You Know Is Wrong”? True about this looks stuff especially.

Or maybe it’s just an efficient fool-filter. Think of all the time I haven’t wasted on a certain kind of idiot. I met Joe when I was 23 and jumped into bed with him two weeks later and it’s been almost 33 years; I think I must have perfected my aim and judgment by then. I mean, so far so good.

(Thomas): some progressive non-feminist guys

That is a contradiction in terms, whether they like it or not.

Okay, sarcasm aside, it really seems like being the sort of anencephalic cumbubble who could write about someone’s feminist arguments making them fat, ugly, and probably also a slut and a shrew, is its own punishment. If they are law-school people, they’ll become the kind of asshole lawyer in tassled loafers that muggers target when they’re feeling community-minded. Sure, they’ll be rich and privelleged, but they’re still assholes.

All of this kind of reminds me of what happens to online support groups for people who have craniofacial conditions. They tend to shut down when losers steal kids’ photos up and put them up on “comedy” web sites.

There seems to be this idea–separate from misogyny, though there was obviously a lot of misogyny in this case–that if you’re not pretty, you’re not human. Anyone remember the Brian Pepper situation? I posted about that on the Snopes message board. Emailed the site administrator to explain, as a lay expert on Crouzon Syndrome, that Pepper had obviously suffered facial trauma–that his symptoms could not be explained by any craniofacial dysostosis with which I was familiar. Got zero response from the Snopes administrator and, as you can see, didn’t get a universally promising response in the thread, either.

Later discovered that someone had found his home phone number and called him to harass him, then taped it for distribution. Fun.

He may be a really nasty piece of work–I have no idea what “gross sexual imposition” means in Ohio–but the fact that any human being could be fair game, to this extent, bugged me. It also bugged me that other people reading these sites who might have suffered similar trauma might well be driven to suicide by the way Pepper was treated.

I want to clarify that I didn’t mean to dignify these jokers’ comments with an answer by saying I think Jill’s pretty. I do, but my real reason for saying that is that when I see people attacked for their looks, of either gender, I feel like that’s what they need to hear right then. Maybe that’s a bad strategy when I’m dealing with folks who are being attacked by misogynists, because I recognize that implies that it matters whether or not they’re seen as “pretty,” and of course it shouldn’t.

And I do know that, when I was once attacked for being Jewish, my answer to that was not “I’m not Jewish.” So I can totally relate where you folks are coming from on taking offense to the “pretty” thing.

I don’t know. It’s a complicated world with some very nasty people in it, and I don’t feel like it’s always possible to respond to their hostility in a dignified, enlightened way. Or if it is, I’m still struggling with that.

I agree with the above comment that this sort of thing takes getting used to, it’s a shock to see pages of threads about your own self, regardless of the content, the fact of its existence replaces your own lens and can make you see yourself as an object of study, at least that was what I found destabilizing when it first happened to me online.
The virtiol and hostility is easily dismissible, but just want to say to Jill if you feel you’re more interested in what they are saying than you think what they say warrants, it’s understandable– I wish someone would have told me it was ok to give myself room to be preoccupied for however long I need, since in time I came to accomodate this sort of bullshit with alacrity. But for a few weeks it was my ruling nightmare and in retrospect I think that’s understandable.

Who cares what you look like or whether or not anyone on the blogosphere finds you fuckable.

Those idiots are too jeuvenile to regard as worthy of comment.

From what I can tell of your writing and the nature of your posts, you are both witty, clever, compassionate, strong and upstanding individuals whom clearly deserve every equally as fantastic person you encounter and that graces your lives.

I think you’re the shit, just based on that criteria alone. And so would anyone worthy of your interest.

That xoxohth or autoadmit or whatever the hell it is board is notorious for being filled with trolls, maniacs, bigots, LSAT-score-flaunters who need to compensate for small penises (two can play the physical insult game), etc. etc. Being attacked there ought to be taken as a badge of honor.